Phenomenology and Psychology of Religion

1. Phenomenology and Psychology of Religion James A. Van Slyke Azusa Pacific University

2. Defining Religious Experience • Part of understanding religion is focusing on individual experiences • Phenomenology • The study of the phenomenon of lived experience • How is religion experienced in the moment? • Is an objective study of individual experiences possible?

3. Defining Religious Experience • Experience as a way to gain knowledge • Intuitive • Affective • Conscious recollection of experiences • Feelings • Perceptions • Images • Memories

4. Plotinus (204-270) • Influential for St. Augustine and other Christian Writers • Religious experience • Turn inward to find the transcendent • Escape from the external world • Seek Union with the Divine • Began Tradition of Perennial Philosophy • All religions experience a shared transcendent set of truths

5. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) • On Religion: Speeches to it Cultured Despisers (1799) • Religion is neither an argument nor a matter of morality • Feeling of absolute dependence • The Christian Faith – The common element – conscious of being absolutely dependent on something – God

6. Rudolf Otto (1869-1939) • The Idea of the Holy • Religious experience is numinous • Non-rational, non-sensory experience • Directed towards something outside the self • Religion is a mystery • To tremble before • And fasinate

7. Rudolf Otto (1869-1939) “The truly ‘mysterious’ object is beyond our apprehension and comprehension, not only because our knowledge has certain irremovable limits, but because in it we come upon something inherently ‘wholly other,’ whose kind and character are incommensurable with our own, and before which we therefore recoil in a wonder that strikes us chill and numb.” – The Idea of the Holy (1917)

8. Martin Buber (1878-1965) • I and Thou (1923) • Humans relate to the world, each other, and God in two fundamental ways • I – It Relation (Scientific) • Person to Object – Describing it, categorizing it • Impersonal; Distant • I – Thou (Relational) • Reciprocal experience of the other • Aesthetic, artistic, religious

9. Dimensions of Consciousness • Differentiated • Every day types of experiences • Intentionality – Consciousness directed at different tasks • Horizon – presence of space and time • Undifferentiated • Loss of the distinction between ourselves and other objects • State of stillness – Monistic experience • All things are experienced as one • Loss of oneself

11. Dimensions of Relationality • Dimension 1 - Objects with nonhuman qualities • Dimension 2 – Recognizing presence of another • Intersubjectivity • Joint experience of subjectivity • Sense of presence between two people • Tension between ourselves and the other • Presence of God • Sometimes combination of nondifferentiated and relational experience

12. William James • Three different Aspects of Religious Belief • Alive – live options that must be dealt with • Forced – cannot be skeptical (example of a marriage proposal) • Momentous – something important to be gained

13. William James • Differences in forms of Belief • Scientific – Rational Beliefs • May be amended with no real bearing on my life • Religious – Moral Beliefs • Too important to wait before choosing • Seeks out what is good • Any decision that is of utmost importance requires an act of faith